Wow! Can you belive this is my 1,000th blog post?!? Four years ago I decided to start a little crafty blog, who knew I’d stick with it this long? Thanks to everyone who commented and read my posts, you make me feel like a million bucks! OK enough of the sappy stuff. You may have heard me complain about Staz-on ink in person, on my blog or in a video (A necessary evil I think I said…) well, I got a lot of well-meaning comments about what might be wrong with my ink: replacing the inner plastic seal (yup, I do that),maybe the environment is to dry (nope, I work in a basement-plus it is alcohol based not water based so I doubt that has much effect) add that to the fact that I reink the pad every time I use it and I was completely stumped…until today! I stamped this tag with my newly revamped Staz-on black ink pad:

The fix for my Staz On ink was so simple, and it was the comment on humidity that was my ah-ha moment. I didn’t need more ink in the pad, I needed more solvent. The solvent for alcohol ink is denatured alcohol, I dumped about a tablespoon of denatured alcohol on the inkpad, let is sit a minute and stamped, it was perfect!

Frugal Alert!Denatured alcohol (an undrinkable form of *Ethanol) is available by the quart at a hardware store for about $7. Denatured alcohol Ethanol is also what Copic clear blending ink is about $7 an ounce. Talk about price mark-up! If you live outside of the US denatured alcohol is also called methylated spirits, people also use it to clean windows🙂 You can use this with your colored alcohol inks to blend or thin them or make lighter colors or custom mixes. Use proper ventilation etc, etc, blah, safety, blah, blah🙂

Edit: Don’t use markers that you reinked in denatured alcohol with an airbrush system due to the additives to the ethanol. See PS below:)

DIY Staz-on Cleaner!

If you clean your stamps straight away you can use a 9 part water to 1 part Simple Green in a spray bottle. I use it to clean all of my rubber stamps. Not recommended for clear stamps (but I’ve used it on the clear stamps and I have not noticed any damage)

Use Simple Green full strength if the ink has been sitting there a while.

For stained stamps coat the rubber with glycerin (or embossing ink) and let sit over night then it will wipe right off with stamp cleaner.

FYI Simple Green is available in the Automotive section of Wal*Mart for about $5 a large bottle.

WOYWW

Julia at the Stamping Ground started this whole What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday phenomenon (I like to think of it as my own personal craft hoarding enablers group) and it is fun to snoop at all of the desks of crafters around the world. Here is mine after I finished my tag:

There is a lot going on here! That nasty cup is from my homemade carrot, apple, celery, grape juice I made today (I’m doing a juice fast this week and I am full of vim & vigor!), I have my Inktense watercolor pencils out that I used to color the entire tag before I inked the edges with some TH tumbled glass ink, then I used my Rollagraph crackled stamp and clear ink to go over the whole thing and then I just brushed brown chalk on with a pom-pom anywhere I wanted the crackle to show. I love that trick because I can sneak in a patterned background and I don’t have to mask!

That’s all for today, thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

PS I got an email from a Copic Certified instructor saying that the Clear blending solution is Ethanol, not denatured alcohol so I looked up the difference and this is the definition I found:

Denatured alcohol – found in bottles at the hardware store or the drug store – is also ethanol. But it has been poisoned to keep people from drinking it. It turns out that ethanol is a good solvent, and also useful as a fuel. And it is pretty cheap to make it. But if you sold ethanol for $2 a gallon at the hardware store, lots of people would be drinking it to avoid the “sin taxes” on beer, wine and whiskey. So they poison the ethanol and sell it without the sin taxes. Source: How Stuff Works